Initially planning on completing just some blocks, I soon found myself watching out for bright colours in quilt shops, quickly picking up some beautiful background fabric (Paradise by Chong-a Kwang for Timeless Treasures) from Shellys Sewing Centre in Goulburn and a jelly roll of Moda Grunge from HobbySew Belconnen. I had never worked with a Jelly roll before, and soon found myself designing quilt after quilt, trying to incorporate a rainbow design, and taking care of the quantity of fabric required. Finally, I settled on this design:

I had no real neutrals in my stash, so I got a couple of jelly rolls of Whispers by Muslin Mates for Kona, and some generic fabrics from Lincraft and Addicted to Fabric.

It was a real labour of love, requiring a lot of math, fabric layout choices, careful cutting, and never ending ironing. So many seams when working with jelly rolls!

Bit by bit, I saw my design come to life, and before long the top was finished.

Because I bought my backing before having a quilt design/final size in mind, I was short by a frustrating few inches. This required a little more design work, and some thin strips of neutral to form small hearts and tie into the front of the quilt

Next was the question of quilting. My old sewing machine has not a lot of throat space, and I was tossing up between straight-line quilting and a stipple effect. With a little help from Christina Cameli's book "First steps to free-motion quilting" I launched head first into my first serious free-motion quilting.

It was difficult working the stitches on such a small machine, but I love how it turned out.

Made with Love by Jen E. 2016 #quiltsforpulse

I was proud to send the quilt to Orlando, to take its place with well over a thousand other quilts worldwide. I have seen that the distribution of these quilts has begun.

You can check out many of the quilts made by searching for the tag #quiltsforpulse

I decided to make a pouch for the dotee doll, and found that using some of my 7.5sq in Japanese charm pack fabric was the perfect size, and I added some of the same lace used on the dotee's bodice when top-stitching the zip.

I had a lot of fun designing this, and I was so happy to see that people are still making and swapping dotees. I'm looking forward to making more! Flickr has lots of great inspiration.

Constance was made from a smattering of linen and cotton fabrics I had picked up from freecycle. If (when!) I make another Constance bunny, I will try and make the face rounder (perhaps attach it separately instead of having the head/body as one pattern piece), the dress wider at the bottom, and I will probably not stuff the ears. I still think it ended up being pretty cute, wonky arms and all.

I bundled Constance up in a plastic sleeve to protect her during her overnight jaunt in the park. Luckily I had a stash of labels and info sheets from the last time I did a drop.

I snuck out last night and hung it from some play equipment. I hope someone visited the park and Constance found a good home on Easter Sunday!

The alien spaceship concept started simply enough, with a sketch of a spaceship (a design suggested by a friend of mine).

Then I got all of my screen paints colours out and went to town. I did it in two layers - colours first, then the black layer. Afterwards I added some details by hand.

I love this photo - it shows the cramped quarters I was working from in 2010. I had everything set up on an ironing board between my bed and my wardrobe.

This detail shows that I didn't quite align my layers. Of course, I realised afterwards that I didn't need to leave a gap in the yellow layer - the black would have printed fine straight over it! Luckily, I like the effect it produced given the context.

If you want to make your own Morsbags, grab the free pattern from the site and some reclaimed material (these bags were made from old sheets). Careful - it's addictive, whether you screenprint them or not!

January 1, 2012

A lot has happened since I last posted. I graduated, for starters! After graduating, I headed to New Zealand for a holiday (my older sister bought a house there), before returning to Australia for work. A year later and I am back in New Zealand, once again for a Christmas holiday.

My younger sister and I made a gingerbread house, as is tradition...

Only this time, it featured banana-wielding ninjas, among other details....

It's been lovely to kick back after a very full-on year. I have been crafting, just not blogging. I hope to share some of my creative work from 2011 in the coming months.

In the meantime, I got up to a little crafting here!

My older sister and I bought a sewing machine for her house last year, and I calculate it has made about 80 Morsbags. To liven things up, I decided to make a little pincushion-in-a-basket. I picked up the cute basket from Trade Aid and the fabric is left over from making Morsbags.

I winged the pattern and ended up having to make the insert smaller. Let's just say that it's a good thing that the basket is curved and you can't see the edges where I brought it in!

Also, it was fun stuffing the cushion with scraps of fabric (I had no filling), but it does mean that there's a bit of resistance when it comes to pushing in the pins. I'm sure it makes for an efficient pin bluntener if nothing else!

I'll leave you with a picture of some of the decorations up in my room here in New Zealand. On the left, the 2012 Frankie Calendar (a Chrissie present) and on the right, a tea towel I picked up from a local op-shop. I'm loving greys and greens at the moment.

September 13, 2010

This is not my artwork. A friend of mine gave it to me after I complimented him on it many years ago. Now a special event of his is coming up, and yesterday was the 9th International Morsbagging Sunday, so I decided to print some Morsbags with his design on them.

I painstakingly traced the design onto freezer paper and cut it out (nothing like a looming deadline to make such tasks seem attractive). Doing the leaves and the basket was extremely fiddly.

Seeing the freezer paper ironed on the bag briefly made me consider screenpainting the design in white rather than black!

This was the first print. I made two, because I wanted to make the most out of all that cutting! As you can see, it's the inverse of the original artwork. It was simple because, as you can see from a couple of photos back, it was made from a single cut-out.

Here is the second, more fiddly bag. For this one, I ironed down all the remaining cut-out pieces one by one.

I had originally planned to add some of the finer details (flowers, petals, hair...) with embroidery thread after painting the bags, but I've decided that they look good as they are, and the threads would probably just snag on the inside of the bag anyway.

The labels went on the back, as there was no real place for them on the front.

Here's a little visual reminder of why you need to place some newspaper (or my favourite - cereal boxes) under fabric that you're screen-painting so that the ink doesn't seep through.

For the presentation, I rolled them up and tied them together with a simple tie I made from the same linen I used for the bags.

The linen was picked up for next to nothing at my local op-shop and was so beautifully soft and easy to work with, that I fear I will not want to sew nor print on anything but the best!

Everything has been packed away again, so hopefully I can get some uni work done now. Although when I went to bed last night, my mind was racing with ideas for doll joints and projects using them... uh oh!

For the next month or so, I'll be concentrating on the work side of things. I've packed away my sewing machine, boxed up my fabric stash, brought out all my books, set up my computer, and will be concentrating on finishing my honours thesis. It's due on October 25... wish me luck!

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